


Restart

by whichstiel



Series: Season 12 Codas [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel-centric, Coda, Feelings, Gen, Healing, M/M, POV Castiel, Season/Series 12, episode coda, rock never dies, spn 12x07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 05:28:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8736589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whichstiel/pseuds/whichstiel
Summary: Mostly a piece about Castiel's feelings regarding his team-up with Crowley, awkwardness with Dean, and deep discomfort with himself. Emotions, man.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Episode coda for Supernatural Season 12, episode 7, Rock never dies.

Irritation has so subsumed Castiel that he can feel it vibrating in the air around his skin. Weeks of Crowley will do that to a person, apparently. And it's not because Crowley is evil (though he is). No, it's because Crowley wants to be...buddies. He's never said as much to Castiel, but the demon orders him drinks and talks about his minions, mother and son, and even an old hamster he used to keep at his palace but might have escaped. Castiel isn't sure why Crowley is so obsessed with an escaped hamster.

Anyway, Crowley either thinks they're pals or he's got a long con in place. Castiel used to suspect the latter but with growing horror he's come to believe that Crowley is truly becoming some kind of ally. He thinks back to Crowley standing up with him beside Lucifer – not to kill the bastard but just to delay him so the Winchesters could save a few fame-seeking innocents. That loyalty is unsettling.

He stands in front of the mirror in his hotel room. Crowley teleported away a few hours ago, having failed to cajole Castiel to join him in an I-survived-Lucifer strip club and booze run. Castiel prods the deep bags under his eyes. His vessel is starting to look as tattered as his wings. He thinks life on Earth may be slowly eating away at him, like a river through a canyon. He's already been changed at the deepest level by the flood of events of the last few years. Two hundred years from now will anybody be able to recognize him as an angel? Does he want to be around in two hundred years?

Of course, maybe that's just Lucifer talking. Castiel can still hear him calling him weak, a dullard, pleasureless. Duty bound. The truth of it burns in him like bile and drenches up the weight of all the things Lucifer didn't say this time around – that he'd had the leisure to say while he occupied Castiel's body.

Castiel pushes away from the mirror. He can't keep spinning his wheels like this, watching the news in hotel rooms hoping for leads on Lucifer. He's got to do something, anything, to feel like himself again. Castiel grabs his coat, turns off the TV, and heads outside for a walk.

The town reminds him a little of Rexford and somehow that makes his chest feel a little warm, a little tight. That had been a hard time, but he'd faced it with pride in his own resilience. He strolls to a park and collapses on a bench under a magnolia tree. Castiel lets his legs stretch out and back slump until he can rest his head on the back of the bench. It's early fall but he can still smell the traces of magnolia blossom permeating the soil around the tree. Though ephemeral to human senses, blossoms are the essence of trees and he sometimes thinks he can read them like language in how they fall. There was a tribe a long time ago that lived on land that is now below water. As far as Castiel has been able to uncover, nobody remembers this group of people except, perhaps, for Castiel. They used to read the language of flowers as prophecy. (And made excellent honey.) He remembers them as being remarkably accurate and he wonders as he inhales the layered meaning of spent magnolia, if their skills survived into the present generation. He could use a little outside wisdom right now.

His phone buzzes and he scrambles to pull it from his pocket expecting a snarky text from Crowley. Perhaps a lewd photo. Castiel's scowl flips into a smile and he thumbs open the conversation.

> **Mary:** Regina...also dead. Fifteen years ago from a ghoul.
> 
> **Castiel:** I'm so sorry, Mary.

He's been texting with Mary. They commiserate over trying to understand the world they both must now live in and how hard it is to restart your life and relationships. Every restart feels more difficult. She has also been teaching him some things about the world that he'd never quite understood before. Once again, he's been overtaken, though at least this time it's by a Winchester. Her patience with him is a like a warm breeze, slow and persistent.

He thinks of his last encounter with Dean and something within him twists like sorrow. There's a mistrust there, newly rekindled but going back years. He knows it's his team-up with Crowley that has dredged those feelings back up with Dean, but he doesn't see any more capable ally than the lying, cheating, teleporting demon. That's a hard, harsh truth all on its own.

> **Mary:** It's okay.
> 
> **Castiel:** Is it?
> 
> **Mary:** It has to be, you know?

He sighs. Oh, yes, he does.

> **Castiel:** Take care of yourself, Mary.
> 
> **Mary:** You too.

“Hey man, spare anything?” The man's voice is rough with the toll of living outside. He hovers near Castiel and meets his eye with a mix of hope and expectant disappointment. Castiel can sense a deep rattling illness in his lungs that dogs him as he tries to sleep and helps keep him awake as he walks the town at night to keep warm.

“Of course.” Castiel digs in his pocket. He has a little cash in his pocket, for once. It's proven useful for encouraging people to spill information. He pulls out a wad of bills, not bothering to count it, and extends his hand.

The man sputters. The park lamp is bright enough to illuminate the numbers on the exterior bills. “Thanks, man.” He snatches it and steps away quickly, as though expecting it to be a cruel prank or a trick to lure him in. The man shoves it in his pocket.

Castiel shrugs. “I've been where you are – with nothing or next to nothing. Not even family.” He looks up again at the tree branches arching over the bench. “Sometimes it helps just to know you're not alone in the world.”

Castiel can feel himself being examined and he waits through it, uncomfortable with the scrutiny. Still, when the man's tone of voice changes as he thanks Castiel again, he knows he can broach the important question. Castiel looks into the other man's eyes and asks, “May I touch your forehead? It's a benediction.” He extends feelings of trust and safety and hopes the man catches on to them.

The man takes another step back, hesitates, and then steps forward again. His hand presses into his hip where the money sits in his pocket and he slowly nods. Castiel's grace pulses a little with the old joy of being trusted for his divine nature instead of vilified. Castiel stands slowly, unthreateningly, and extends his hand to press two fingers onto the other man's forehead. Grace flows between them and the man inhales sharply, deeply, and doesn't cough. His eyes are half shut. “What did you-?”

Castiel sits back down. “Have a good night. Take care of yourself.”

After a time, the man departs and the park is once again empty. Castiel smiles, then reaches his senses towards the magnolia, trying to read the tendrils it draws upon the ground and grows into the whorls of its bark.

His phone buzzes. He pulls it out, wondering what Mary might want. Their conversations are usually short, to the point. Another thing to like about Mary.

> **Dean:** I'm sorry.

Castiel leans his head forward and exhales, trying to expel all the red tension of the last few weeks, months – _god_ – years. His grace pulses a little and he settles the currents of his wings warm and close around him as though they might hide him from sight. His throat burns and he coughs a little as emotions tangle into the flesh of his body like magnolia blossoms sunk into dirt. Finally, he types.

> **Castiel:** Me too.

It's a start.


End file.
